Smoked By Windows Phone Campaign Gets Smoked!

While Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 OS might not have managed to gain as much share the Redmond based company was hoping for, but its ‘Smoked By Windows Phone’ campaign definitely did! The ‘Smoked By Windows Phone’ campaign was initially kicked off by @BenThePCGuy at CES this year.

In the competition, Ben would pit his WP7 running phone against any other smartphone – BB, Android, or the iPhone – against any random task as chosen by the opponent. If the non-WP7 user would win, he would get $100 from Ben! If not, they would have to get a picture of themself clicked saying their current smartphone got smoked by Windows Phone. Our own Apple editor, Parth, managed to smoke Ben in uploading a photo on Twitter at the competition during CES.

In the last few years, the ‘Smoked By Windows Phone’ campaign was definitely one of the most interactive and unique advertisement campaigns from any company. However, today morning, the Smoked By Windows Phone campaign did exactly opposite of what it was supposed to do.

One Galaxy Nexus owner (Sahas), who took part in the ‘Hunger Games‘ themed Smoked By Windows Phone, won the competition but lost “Just Because”. Basically, Sahas managed to beat the Microsoft store employee by a split second, but he was refused the $1000 and the laptop because the Microsoft stores employees refused to accept that he won. Readers can find out more information about the controversial event here.

Thanks to all the negative media publicity, @BenThePCGuy himself decided to take things in his own had and gave Sahas the laptop that he won along with a free Windows Phone, and an apology email. While it is still unknown as to whether it was Sahas who was right or the Microsoft employees at the store, one thing is for sure. This negative publicity is definitely going to hurt the ‘Smoked By Windows Phone’ campaign from Microsoft!